GENEVA – The Bahamas will host the Ninth Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in the Americas and the Caribbean (RP26) during the first week of May next year,’ Minister of State responsible for Disaster Risk Management, Leon Lundy, has announced.
Minister of State responsible for Disaster Risk Management in the Bahamas, Leon Lundy (CMC Photo)He told delegates attending the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction here that “as we look to RP26 let it be a catalyst for reform, for resilience and for regional resolve.
“The Bahamas is ready, ready to host, ready to lead, ready to welcome all of you to our islands for a new defining moment of shared purpose and a fierce belief that we can and we must do better,” he told the “Accelerating resilient development through risk-informed investment in Americas and the Caribbean” conference.
The audience included Kamal Kishore, special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction; Ronald Jackson, head of the Disaster Risk Reduction, Recovery and Resilience Building Team at the United Nations Development Programme Crisis Bureau and Elizabeth Riley, the executive director of the Barbados-based Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency.
“There are moments, defining moments that change how we see the world, moments that split time into before and after, not just for individuals, but for entire nations,” Lundy said.
He said that September 1, 2019, was one of those moments for The Bahamas when Hurricane Dorian devastated the island chain.
Hurricane Dorian, the strongest hurricane on record to hit the Bahamas, battered Abaco and Grand Bahama for three days, causing catastrophic damage.
The category 5 storm, combined with a “king tide”, generated a massive tidal wave up to 21 feet high that flooded the low-lying islands.
“It laid bare not only the vulnerability of our people but the fragility of our systems, the limits of our preparedness and the urgent need to do things differently. We lost lives, mothers, fathers and children,” Lundy said.
“We lost whole communities swept away in hours. We lost a part of ourselves we may never fully get back but we also gained something, something fierce, something honest. We gained resolve. We gained the painful but powerful understanding that resilience is not a luxury, it is a necessity.”
He said the Bahamas was not alone as regard the impact of natural hazards, noting the 2021 earthquake in Haiti, the landslides in Brazil in 2022 and the destructive path of Hurricane Beryl through the Caribbean last year.
“From floods to hurricanes to wildfires time and time again, we are tested, we are brought to our knees, but each time we are impacted, we’ve seen something extraordinary, a commitment to stand back up and a collective determination to build back better. That determination is why I’m here today.”
He said that while The Bahamas was announcing the hosting of RP26 with “both humility and purpose”, the meeting “cannot be another round of talks, another set of declarations filed away.
“Our nations cannot afford it. RP26 must be urgent; it must be bold and it must be real,” Lundy said, adding that The Bahamas has changed since Hurricane Dorian “because we had to.
“We’ve shifted from a reactive approach to a more proactive, institutionalized model of disaster risk governance. We’ve established an independent disaster risk management authority, and we have codified resilience in law.
“We have launched a legally mandated, comprehensive disaster risk financial strategy, and we have begun the hard work of embedding resilience into how we build, how we plan and how we govern.”
He said the country was not yet where it wanted to be
“We are still learning, still growing, but we’re committed, and that commitment to action is what RP 26 represents for us, as we know it does for the entire region, Latin America and the Caribbean, especially our Caribbean small island developing states, they face disproportionate risk, caught between a climate crisis that we did not cause and a global climate agenda that often overlooks our most urgent needs.
“Still, we are not victims waiting in rescue. This vulnerability, this necessity, has forged us as collaborators, innovators, and, most importantly, leaders,” Lundy said, adding RP26 is the natural continuation of that legacy.
“It is a platform to come together, to listen, to share and to drive each other forward. It is where we take the Sendai Framework off the page and into our communities and where we demand collectively that the world recognize the stakes in which we live daily,” Lundy said.
“For me, it is simple. We cannot afford another Dorian. We cannot afford to be unready, unfunded or unheard, because the next storm will not wait for us to catch up, and the earth will not pause while we debate,” the Bahamas minister for disaster risk management said.
